


Dark — Meta

by young neem leaves (3ImpossiblyEclecticDuck6)



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, honestly what even are the relationships in this show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:01:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24249226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3ImpossiblyEclecticDuck6/pseuds/young%20neem%20leaves
Summary: Thoughts on this trash fire of a show that I continue to watch for unknown reasons.
Relationships: Claudia Tiedemann & Jonas Kahnwald, Franziska Doppler/Magnus Nielsen, Hannah Kahnwald & Jonas Kahnwald, Hannah Kahnwald/Ulrich Nielsen, Jonas Kahnwald & Bartosz Tiedemann, Jonas Kahnwald & Michael Kahnwald | Mikkel Nielsen, Jonas Kahnwald/Martha Nielsen, Katharina Nielsen/Ulrich Nielsen
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	1. Jonas & Colour Symbolism

**Author's Note:**

> Published first on July 5, 2019, in reply to this gifset: https://alienwlw.tumblr.com/post/186052137954

What I really like about this, other than the _#aesthetic_ , is that if one is into colour symbolism and theory, yellow stands for:

  * **positive** : energy, friendship, hope, joy, rationality
  * **negative** : betrayal, cowardice, indecisiveness, sickness (also, antisemitism)



And these are all such heavy issues for Jonas.

Jonas is just a teenage boy who’d love nothing more than to go on bike rides with his friends, picnics at the lake, sexy times with the girl he crushes on really, really hard, lighthearted teasing with his parents. He always remembers the summer full of sunshine and love with acute yearning. But he can never get any true _joy_ out of it. His worldview has become horribly skewed. After Mikkel’s disappearance and suicide, and the subsequent revelations about the town’s history, his life has been completely engulfed by depression and horror.

His family has always been strained for money. He takes care of his things, and he wears his yellow raincoat often and with some fondness for the old and familiar. The yellow he wears becomes emblematic of the kind of person he once was and still _hopes_ to be in his heart of hearts; but also of the _sickness_ that afflicts Winden: the _jealousy_ and desire, the old grudges that flare up suddenly and sometimes turn into terrible _betrayals_ , the unwillingness to go beyond one’s ego and truly understand others ([Martha, Franziska](https://youngneemleaves.tumblr.com/post/186072077917/i-started-thinking-of-where-martha-stands-in-terms), and Elizabeth are rare exceptions to this), the pain and anger from being perpetually misunderstood, and worst of all, _the radioactive waste_ , the prime symbol of the violence and corruption plaguing the town.

Also, _betrayal_ remains the most important issue for Jonas, his worst fear, throughout the second series.

  * Because of his obsession with her, he fears losing Martha, betraying her safety and moral integrity, so much that he threatens her with a gun to make her follow him to the bunker. (I mean, those were some extremely tragic, disturbing moments, and I’ve never cheered for Martha more than when she pushes him away.) Even so, he does become directly responsible for her death, the loss he wanted so desperately to avoid. 
  * He loses his faith in Hannah after finding out how she’d been betraying people right and left throughout her life, consumed by her own obsessive love for Ulrich. Hannah, in turn, betrays her own son to take revenge on Ulrich, by going so far as to steal Jonas’s time machine and choosing not to return to him.
  * He’s accused of betrayal by Bartosz in more than one sense, and even by Mikkel, his own father. He did actually betray Mikkel.
  * Katharina never bothers to hide her disgust with him, a reflection of her hatred for his mother, and her sense of Hannah’s betrayal by taking away her husband and youngest son would only be amplified when she comes to know that Jonas is responsible for her daughter’s death in that particular timeline, too.
  * He’s been betrayed repeatedly by his older selves, who have, in turn, betrayed all the good that he used to believe in, and the only way he can think of to escape his fate is by betraying his older selves, the people he’s supposed to turn into, and the instructions he gets from them, even though he fails again and again. He betrays himself even when he comes back for Martha after breaking up with her in series 1 (because she’s his aunt).
  * His middle aged self thinks Claudia has betrayed him and his cause, whereas Claudia’s real motivations throughout her time-travelling plot aren’t absolutely clear to anyone.
  * His oldest self claims he’s transcended all fear and desire, but he has Noah - someone who has betrayed and been betrayed for years and years and never realised the extent of his mistakes until he realised where his daughter has ended up - _executed_ for betrayal. (I mean, at that point, Adam is just a massive ball of hypocrisy and grandstanding; neither his obsession with Martha, nor his ambivalent relationship with Claudia have been resolved.) Not only that, he incites more betrayal: to re-enter the cult, Agnes must prove her dedication by betraying her brother again and killing him, after having betrayed them all the first time by leaving the cult. There’s a beautifully duplicitous Judas analogy there.



The only constant with Jonas is that he betrays everyone _and_ himself, and his consequent guilt and self-loathing is so intense that it drives him to even more self-destructive and dangerous modes of action.

Although yellow is the colour of the sun, it adds almost no clarity to Jonas’s life.


	2. On Martha Nielsen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I started thinking of where Martha stands in terms of symbolism and parallels, with betrayal being the keynote of Jonas’s arc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First published on July 5, 2019

The main thing about Martha, the Biblical character, is that her priorities aren’t where other people think they should be. She’s not like Mary - dutiful, wise, spiritually-minded Mary. She was said to be materialistic, short-sighted, pragmatic, outgoing. Yet, she’s the one who gets the door to her dead brother’s tomb opened so that he can be resurrected.

Martha Nielsen is also portrayed as sentimental and naive from the start. She’s on a hunger strike by herself until hunger is stopped across the world. She’s theatrical (literally), and indecisive. She’s a _teenager_ , as are Jonas, Bartosz, and Franziska. She’s also artistic (theatre), and takes time to introspect in way that others often don’t (thinking that children don’t really understand who their parents are, or were, as people). She’s the first person in the story who realises the importance of reaching out to others and being honest with them when everyone else (except Franziska) is too busy being isolated, secretive, self-pitying heroes in their own stories. She gets angry when people don’t answer her demand of honest and complete communication. And although Martha breaks down in tears in her moment of existential despair on stage, she doesn’t always concern herself with the metaphysical aspect of things. She doesn’t try to stop the causal loops. She’s more grounded - and in series 2, more selfish. 

But then, her selfishness - her grief for her lost family members superseded by her all-consuming love for Jonas - isn’t unique to her. After her _loss of naivete_ , it’s simply something she sees in everyone else around her, recognises in herself, and accepts. It’s why she shoots down Bartosz when he tries to up the team spirit and raise awareness about the time travel conspiracies. She’s accepted the severely fractured state of their relationships, the violence they’ve inherited from their older generations, and the isolation of their lives. Unlike Jonas, she doesn’t take it upon herself to heal everybody and restore time and physical balance in the universe. Martha’s pragmatism is a cue for Martha Nielsen to grasp the reality of Winden; and once she’s seen the void, she can’t look any other way except inside herself. And indeed, Martha’s priorities lose balance in the end. Katharina would be appalled if she knew her daughter willingly chose to love Jonas (the son of Hannah Kahnwald, the woman who betrayed the two families in some of the worst ways possible) romantically and sexually in spite of the truth.

Fittingly, the colour most associated with her is _red_ , the red of her lipstick, her blood gushing from her bullet wound, her Ariadne’s thread —

  * **positive** : blood, desire, power, sensitivity, love
  * **negative** : danger, lust, violence, wrath



What I find most interesting is how selfish, sentimental, earthbound Martha becomes Ariadne in a story where no one, NO ONE (except Claudia, maybe) knows what’s really happening. In-universe, her influence is so strong that she returns after being horribly, blandly fridged, and protects the person directly responsible for her death, and in the process, maintains her own relevance to the larger plot(s). An enormous difference is made by the simple fact that alt!Martha has a time-and-space travel device of her own, is capable of using it, and uses it to make a difference, but in a way that’s entirely true to her character. This automatically places her in the same league as Jonas, Bartosz, Claudia, and other time-travelling characters. Notably, she’s entered Adam’s world - the ostensibly enlightened, transcendent future where Jonas has managed to shed all emotional vulnerabilities and devoted himself to a singular, superhuman purpose, making his cult out of the people who once didn’t think much of him and even distrusted him. It’s a perfect white male scientist-saint’s fantasy. But the desire he’d claimed to have freed himself from (which, I’m 99% sure, is a lie) now inserts itself into the narrative again, in the form of Martha, the emblem of materialistic passion.

I know that at this point, there’s the very real possibility that Adam had known of alt!Martha’s entry and had prepared beforehand, and perhaps that’s what he informed middle aged!Jonas about in the letter. And there’s no telling what middle aged!Jonas knew and had been through. But I still think Martha’s re-entry into the story in an altered capacity is very significant, and it’s not ultimately good for Adam’s totally-detached-from-the-weaknesses-of-time-limited-flesh-what-are-you-even-talking-about visions for the future.


	3. The Fall of the Nielsen Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most popular middle class family in the extremely white and cishet town of Winden is also perhaps the most fucked up in town history. (Which is saying something, considering the town history.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First published on July 8, 2019.

Does anyone ever think about how cursed the Nielsen family is from the start? Ulrich and Katharina used to be bullies at school, super popular but never caring about the impact they had on other people’s lives, selfish and outgoing. They even make a perfect family with three children. And then they fall so, so hard, and so low.

  * We don’t know if **Agnes Nielsen** ’s marriage had been a happy one (I suspect it wasn’t), but we do know she’d been a time traveller who left her cult and fled with her son, betraying her brother in the process. (I also have my suspicions about the nature of her relationship with her brother.) She found a woman to love in her new place of residence (Doris Tiedemann), but of course, she had to rejoin the cult to ensure her own survival, forced to betray Claudia Tiedemann, Doris’s daughter, although they probably were good friends. Claudia knew about Doris and Agnes, and supported them till the end of her life (that’s seriously heartwarming).
  * **Tronte Nielsen** was a trash fire of a human being who lied to and cheated on his wife repeatedly, who was bad enough at keeping secrets that his wife knew who he was having an extramarital affair with, and even his love interest - Claudia Tiedemann - felt embarrassed by him. He lost his youngest son and lived long enough to see his horribly mutilated corpse again, before meeting an aged version of Claudia who explains a little bit of what the hell is going on.
  * **Jana Nielsen** was someone very few people ever paid attention to. And yet, her life was just as bad as Katharina and Martha’s. Losing her son and having to wait for him in vain broke her for the rest of her life, plus being aware of her husband’s extramarital affair, and seeing her elder son gradually slip beyond control and beyond any hope of repair. She loses her youngest grandson in the exact way she lost her son, she even gets to hold him in her living room, but she never sees the connections.
  * **Ulrich Nielsen** was more a result of his socioeconomic circumstances (I haven’t forgiven the writers for not exploring the ‘80s culture in more detail, there’s just so much there). But he did used to be a bully, alongside Katharina, treating Regina Tiedemann so badly on multiple occasions that it seriously traumatised her. He cheats on his wife later on with Hannah, and deserts Hannah when Mikkel disappears, only then realising what a douche he’s been all his life. Then he gets lost in 1953 Winden, being wrongly convicted as a psychotic child murderer and shoved into a mental asylum. He stays there, trapped for thirty-freaking-three years, and finds his lost son only to lose him all over again. Not only that, he sees his two other children just across the road from him but cannot speak to them.
  * **Katharina Nielsen** had an abusive mother and didn’t get along with her. Nevertheless, she’s been more or less accustomed to being at the top of her social circle since adolescence: aggressive and outgoing in high school, popular as the town school principal, a disciplinarian at home. That is, right until her youngest son disappears (and it isn’t one of his favourite magic tricks), she discovers her husband’s been cheating on her and keeping secrets from her, her husband disappears, and she finds out that her son travelled to the past and ended up marrying his father’s future extramarital partner. His son, in turn, is at the centre of the entire time-travelling conspiracy that’s twisted the world inside out.
  * **Magnus Nielsen** is such a pervy loser that he stalks a girl from classroom to classroom and house to house, stalking her through the forest trail for hours, takes pictures of her when she’s not paying attention and spends hours poring over them, startles her when she’s skinny-dipping in the lake, and repeatedly intrudes into her affairs. (And we’re supposed to believe Franziska actually feels something for him and they have a real romantic relationship.) He never knows what’s really going on, ever.
  * **Martha Nielsen** just wants to talk to people and maybe laugh with them if things are going well. But she has her grandfather’s problem of _never, ever getting over her first crush, no matter what_ \- even after she loses her youngest brother, finds out he’s time-travelled to the past and eventually committed suicide, the suicide that embarrassed her when his son tried to talk about him in the future, and the boy she’s had a massive crush on for years, who broke up with her a couple of months ago out of some unspecified guilt, is actually her nephew. She risks death to be able to share a last kiss with him before the world ends. 
  * **Mikkel Nielsen** \- what do I even say about the poor guy. Betrayed by literally everyone in town, again and again, throughout his life - even his son, although he forgives him.
  * **Jonas Kahnwald** \- !!!!!!!!!




End file.
